Generally described, large scale enterprise computer systems can include a number of data objects that are stored in various databases, software applications, and/or other data stores. In one aspect, the data objects can correspond to encapsulations of data relating to one or more business applications, which are generally referred to as business objects. Business objects can be in the form of structured or unstructured data relating to physical objects, such as equipment, personnel, etc. Additionally, business objects can also relate to abstract objects, such as database entities, textual descriptions of concepts, meta data, etc.
Generally described, business objects can be identified in accordance with conventional data processing approaches with an independently assigned domain specific unique identifier, such as a database key constraint. One skilled in the relevant art will appreciate that domain specific unique identifiers are not dependent on the specific business object data they represent. Instead, domain specific unique identifiers are limited to representing specific business object data and the identifier cannot be recreated for each instance of data representing a business object. Accordingly, a particular instance of a business object, such as a representation of an individual, may be associated with a number of unique identifiers. As the number of data sources containing business object data increases, such as independent databases, traditional data processing approaches become deficient in associating all business object data from each independent source.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method for uniquely representing business objects that is dependent on specific business object attributes and that is invariant with specific values of business object attribute data.